THREE REA­SONS WHY

A new re­port from Col­liers fore­cast that the Gulf will see an 81 per­cent in­crease in Chi­nese tourists to 2.9 mil­lion by 2022

Chi­nese tourism to the Gulf re­gion is set to rise, buoyed by more car­rier routes

Con­nec­tiv­ity

Among the rea­sons for the in­crease is a rise in the num­ber of ad­di­tional and di­rect flights to the re­gion from China. Over the last decade, a num­ber of air­lines – in­clud­ing Emi­rates, Eti­had, Sau­dia, Gulf Air, China Eastern and Air China, have in­tro­duced di­rect flights to and from the GCC to China. In the UAE alone, Emi­rates of­fers 38 weekly flights be­tween the UAE and Chi­nese cities such as Bei­jing and Shang­hai.

More tourists

By the year 2030,

China is ex­pected to ac­count for ap­prox­i­mately a quar­ter of all in­ter­na­tional tourism, Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, about 400 mil­lion Chi­nese na­tion­als will travel abroad – many of them for the first time – com­pared to 154 mil­lion in 2018. Saudi Ara­bia will ex­pe­ri­ence the high­est pro­por­tion­ate in­crease in arrivals in the re­gion, with a com­pound an­nual growth rate of 33 per­cent be­tween 2018 and 2022.

Tai­lored of­fer­ings

In the last sev­eral years, tourism au­thor­i­ties and op­er­a­tors have un­veiled of­fer­ings specif­i­cally tai­lored to the Chi­nese mar­ket. In the UAE, for ex­am­ple, the Hala China Ini­tia­tive has an­nounced plans to set up a ded­i­cated Man­darin hot­line and concierge ser­vice for vis­i­tors to Dubai. The an­nounce­ment was fol­lowed by a Chi­nese film fes­ti­val screen­ing some of China's most pop­u­lar block­buster hits.